Be content and don’t complain about your “ruined” semester – Adventures with Abby

I’m tired of seeing seniors complain about their last semesters being ruined. I’m tired of hearing and reading about students lamenting that they couldn’t spend time with their friends or go on all the adventures associated with spring semester and the return of warm weather. I’m tired of catching thoughts like “If it wasn’t for this stupid virus I could go to Taco Bell with friends” floating through my own brain.

All the while, people are dying.

It would be the understatement of the decade to say that the world is a little crazy right now.

Apparently a pandemic exposest facets of people we’ve only glimpsed before. Some panic-buy everything, some defiantly continue living their lives as normal and others go out of their way to help their neighbors.

Amidst the fear, isolation and grief flooding my social media timelines lies something else that annoys me every time I see it or find myself giving in to it:

Complaining.

Expressing genuine frustrations is not a bad thing — although social media might not be the best place for it — but most of what I’ve seen is not that.

Let me be clear. It is both appropriate and healthy to process an unexpected and unwelcome change of events with sadness or frustration. However, it is neither appropriate nor healthy to be so focused on ourselves that the greatest tragedies of the COVID-19 pandemic are its effects on our social plans.

Christians are called to be better. This is what Paul meant in that oft-misquoted passage from Philippians 4.

“I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content,” Paul wrote. “I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:11b-13).

So, brothers and sisters, let’s be content in Christ. Let’s be content in calling friends instead of seeing them in person. Let’s be content doing whatever we can to help the sick and the medical professionals. Let’s be content knowing that this pandemic and its effects won’t last forever but that we have the opportunity to love sacrificially while it does.